TY  - BOOK
AU  - Geruso,Michael
AU  - Layton,Timothy J.
AU  - Wallace,Jacob
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - Are All Managed Care Plans Created Equal? Evidence from Random Plan Assignment in Medicaid
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 2020///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - August 2020; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - Exploiting random assignment of Medicaid beneficiaries to managed care plans, we identify plan-specific effects on healthcare utilization. Auto-assignment to the lowest-spending plan generates 30% lower spending than if the same enrollee were assigned to the highest-spending plan, despite identical cost-sharing. Effects via quantities, rather than differences in negotiated prices, explain these patterns. Rather than reducing "wasteful" spending, low-spending plans cause broad reductions in the use of medical services--including low-cost, high-value care--and worsen beneficiary satisfaction and health. Supply side tools circumvent the classic trade-off between financial risk protection and moral hazard, but give rise instead to a cost/quality trade-off
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w27762
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w27762
ER  -